Asleep at the Wheel
Thirty years ago, when I was a District Sales Manager for a manufacturer of safety equipment based in Reading, Pennsylvania, the territory I managed comprised of seven states, which I had to cover by car. In order to do this effectively, I averaged driving about 1,700 miles per week, in addition to riding with my distributor representatives in their automobiles. Needless to say, I was either driving, or riding in, an automobile eleven hours a day. My biggest fear in those days was falling asleep at the wheel. To have done so would have surely brought about my own demise, and might well have resulted in the death of others, as well. Fortunately, between listening to talk radio and feebly practicing impersonations, I managed to stay awake during the years I had such a demanding schedule. Yet, the fear of falling asleep at the wheel has remained with me, even though my road trips have diminished considerably in recent years.
Just as falling asleep behind the wheel of a motor vehicle presents potentially disastrous consequences, particularly for those who must make their living on the road, falling asleep behind the wheel of state has the potential of bringing down a presidency, as well as a nation, in this day and age. With crises brewing around a hostile world, it is indeed unfortunate, not to mention potentially perilous, that the President of the United States seems to be asleep at the helm of our nation.
Russia is flexing their muscles to a greater degree than at any time since the 1980’s, as evidenced by the assault on the Ukraine which has already resulted in the annexation of Crimea, and continued military operations against the Ukrainian Republic. At one point, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently reminded the west that Russia is a nuclear nation- something that a Russian leader has not done since Nikita Khrushchev in the early 1960’s, when he deployed intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba. e did thisPutin did this in the full knowledge that Putin did this knowing full well that Obama’s response would be feckless, tepid or non-existent, which is exactly what happened. Putin would never had been so bold with Ronald Reagan or, for that matter, either George Bush (father and son) or Bill Clinton, which differentiates Barack Obama from his (count ‘em) four immediate predecessors in a way no real American would ever want their commander-in-chief so differentiated. It is even arguable that Jimmy Carter, as feckless and incompetent as he most certainly was, would not have appeared as weak and as vapid in the international arena as Barack Obama appears to our friends, and our foes, alike.
And then there is ISIS, or ISIL, if you prefer. Regardless of what label you want to put on these murderous bastards, they pose a far greater threat than Al Quada ever did. In the wake of Obama’s retreat from Iraq- a conflict that was surely won as the result of the surge during the closing years of the Bush administration, the void that Obama left behind was just as surely filled by Islamic radicals the likes of which we have never seen before. Equipped with military hardware that we left behind for the run-away Iraqi military, and funding from Islamic organizations the world over that dwarfs any resources that Osama bin Laden had at his own disposal, ISIS has exponentially expanded its grip on the eastern half of Syria to the northern third of Iraq and has done so largely without response from Iraq’s military, NATO, Turkey, nor the United States, itself. Its members routinely rape children, abduct and rape women, murder religious minorities to a degree not seen since the Nazi holocaust, sever the heads of western journalists, and are the fearsome front line of radical Islam’s war on the West- a war that we refuse to call by name, or even acknowledge that it so exists, while our president attends fund-raiser after fund-raiser, improves his game on the links, and spends his political capital assaulting Republicans as if the GOP was the real enemy of the United States, instead. He has yet to formulate a cohesive strategy to deal with such threats as ISIS and Russia present, and in the vacuum of such non-existent leadership, allows bad actors to dominate the world’s stage, instead.
In essence, Barack Obama remains asleep at the wheel of our nation, and in doing so, imperils us to a far greater degree than even the months leading up to the attacks on September 11, 2001. Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Obama’s domestic agenda, failing to defend our nation in the face of such threats, renders such a domestic agenda pointless, when our worst fears may well soon be realized. So I ask, “Is this really what we want in a president?”
-Drew Nickell, 3 September 2014
© 2014 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved